Fax messaging continues to be an important avenue for easy delivery of secure messages between individuals worldwide. Fax messaging continues to be important, despite the proliferation of data services that use the Internet. The send and receive fax messaging services operated by j2 Global Communications of Hollywood, Calif., are appropriate examples. With the j2 Send service, a fax message is transmitted through the public switch telephone network via fax protocol, on behalf of a subscriber to the service. Typically, a user that subscribes to the service is instructed to attach a document that is to be faxed to an email message, and address the email message to a j2 Global domain name, with the destination fax number as the prefix. This email is then sent, from the user's Internet connected computer, to the j2 Global internal network where it is converted and then transmitted as a fax transmission. This is also referred to as an outbound service.
Fax messaging services may also include an inbound (or receive) service, such as j2 Receive, where a subscriber is assigned a unique, direct inward dial (DID) telephone number which the user distributes to others who may wish to send a fax to the user. This telephone number is in effect the user's individual fax number. When an incoming fax is received at a particular DID number, the j2 Global internal network converts the received fax transmission into a format that is compatible with an email protocol. An image file containing the received fax image is attached to an email that is then sent to the subscriber's email address. The subscriber may then access her email account, select the email that includes a received fax, detach the image file and display the file on her Internet connected computer to view the received fax transmission.
The promotion of such fax messaging services have until now been quite limited in their approach.